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‘You youngsters, always your faces in your phones.’
I frowned at Nanna’s comment. Faces in phones? For some reason my mind conjured a very literal interpretation of those words. I glanced to my brother, Frankie, across the other side of the cramped room. Cramped today, at least, given the guests we’d squeezed inside our modest five-bed home for my dad’s birthday.
Frankie did indeed have his phone out, head down, shoulders hunched as he typed away. Nanna carried on talking, about the good old days, of course, but I struggled to listen properly. Usually I cherished these moments with her, even if I didn’t always agree with what she had to say, but today I was simply too distracted.
Through old age, ill health and accidents, my eighty-seven-year-old Nanna – my mum’s mum – was the oldest surviving family member we had. Something of a relic, a treasure of a bygone era.
That might sound a little strange, a twenty-year-old having a grandma of eighty-seven, but Nanna had been forty-four when she’d given birth to Mum. Very old, so I’m told, over and over. Far too old to have a child. Much better to have them in your early twenties – Nanna relishes in telling me – when you’re fit and healthy and when your womb is a bastion of wonderfulness and youthfulness, hasn’t been stretched or torn or worn, or something like that. I grimaced at the thoughts building in my head.
I was nowhere near ready to be a mother, certainly not mentally.
‘Have you got yourself a nice, young man yet, Jess?’ Nanna asked, as she put a withered old hand onto my bare knee. Her skin was mottled, bruised here and there. She bruised so easily, scarily so really. I put my hand on top of hers and tried to give her my full attention, ignoring the little spat at the other end of the room between my parents – the reason for my distraction. Or one of the reasons anyway.
Had anyone else noticed?
‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘There is a boy I like. We’ve been dating, but it’s…’ I didn’t finish the sentence. How could I begin to explain all that to Nanna? I’d intended – had hoped to build the courage – to try and talk to Mum and Dad this weekend, but they’d been so awkward with each other. With me too. I hadn’t told them anything. I didn’t tell Nanna either. Instead, I said, ‘He’s really nice. Tall. Handsome. He’s got green eyes that you could stare at all day. He plays football for the university team.’
Nanna smiled and nodded. ‘He must be very fit then. Don’t let him get away. The best ones get taken up quickly.’
‘I’m sure they do.’
‘But you’ll be fine. You’re clever. A degree? I can’t believe it. My little Jess, getting herself a degree at university. Not many women in our family can say that. I never had the chance. Impossible in my day. Any man would be proud to have you.’
‘That’s very sweet of you,’ I said, flattered by the genuinely heartfelt statement. I kissed her on the forehead. ‘Do you want anything?’ I held up my empty champagne flute.
‘I’m okay,’ she said.
I got up from the arm of the chair and moved across the room, smiling here and there. I walked past my dad who was now busy talking to Frankie – perhaps telling him to come off his phone. No chance I could get a private moment with him right now, even though, out of my parents, he was the one who I knew it would be easier to talk to, given the subject.
Instead I headed out into the hall, looking for Mum. I found her in the kitchen. By the sink, water gushing. She was alone, her back to me, her shoulders hunched and… quivering? Crying?
‘Mum?’
She quickly reached out, stopped the tap, ran her forearm across her face before she spun around to me.
‘Darling, are you okay?’ she asked. She smiled brightly though the cracks appeared within a beat or two.
‘I’m fine. Are you?’
‘Me? Yes, just cleaning a couple of glasses. We always run out.’
There were indeed four washed wine glasses draining on the side, but I didn’t buy it. The way she’d rushed out of the lounge, away from Dad…
I moved closer to her. She was jittery, as though she knew I knew something – which I didn’t, even though I wanted to. I’d rarely seen her so awkward around me.
Actually, no, that’s not true at all. But on an occasion like this, with all the family around, my mum was normally centre of attention. Hostess extraordinaire, running around filling glasses, feeding everyone until they popped, laughing, joking, getting the silly games and the dancing going.
As a young girl I always wanted to be just like her, in pretty much every way. I styled my hair like hers, tried to talk and walk and dress like her. Really, I didn’t look much like her at all. She had high cheekbones, a little snub nose, piercing bluey-green eyes. I had dull brown eyes, a more rounded face, wider lips, darker hair. A face more like Dad’s. I’d realised as I’d gone through my teenage years that I wasn’t really much like her personality-wise either. More reserved, but also impulsive. Naive? Or was that simply my age?
Still, I continued to look up to her. I loved her warmth. Her kindness. I loved her exuberance on occasions like this.
Yet today she was just… a little bit flat. Less than flat. On edge.
I reached out and took her wrist and gave a gentle squeeze. ‘If there was something wrong, you’d tell me, right?’
A strange flicker in Mum’s eyes, but she pulled her face back to bright and breezy in a flash and swooshed her golden hair behind her as she looked over my shoulder. ‘Hey, sweetie,’ she said, and I knew from the saccharin tone and the way she stooped down, exactly who had just walked in.
Mum scooped Lily – my five-year-old sister – in her arms and Lily, in her pink Peppa Pig pyjamas, clung on with both arms and both legs, and buried her head.
‘You’re supposed to be asleep,’ Mum said.
‘It’s too noisy,’ Lily squeaked. ‘All I can hear is Frankie doing monkey noises.’
I smiled. Yes, that definitely sounded like Frankie.
‘But it’s really late,’ Mum said. ‘Just shut your door and close your eyes and think nice things.’
‘I can’t shut my door because of–’ Lily didn’t finish the sentence. Instead she squealed in shock when a crash came from the dining room. Breaking glass. Followed by sarcastic cheers from loud male voices.
Then, almost in unison, ‘Mum!’ and ‘Jane!’ were bellowed from my eldest brother and Dad.
‘Jess, could you take her back upstairs?’ Mum said, trying to hand me Lily.
I hesitated. I always did. I wasn’t any good with Lily. She was too… little. Even though I’d been so similar, at least at that age – another mini version of Mum – I didn’t get her. And not just because she was so much younger than me, but because… she was a girl. Perhaps that’s confusing, but even through my early girly years, I’d grown up with brothers around me. I had virtually no memories of my life before seventeen-year-old Frankie was born, not long after my third birthday, and I was nearly eleven when Tom – now nine – was born. In a really weird way, and as really weird as they both were in many – often disgusting – ways, I got them. I’d grown up with them.
But Lily?
‘Jess, please?’ Mum said in her exasperated tone. The one she used when addressing me as a child.
I reluctantly took Lily from her. My sister clung to me like a koala bear on a tree trunk, but as soon as Mum left the room to clear up someone else’s mess – one of her life’s duties – I bent down and dragged Lily off me. ‘Come on then, Lil,’ I said to her. She looked up at me, a little hurt, I thought, but then grabbed my hand.
I took her up the stairs, to her bedroom, tucked her back into bed.
‘Will you read to me?’ Lily asked.
‘It’s too late,’ I said. ‘Time to sleep now.’
She held the covers close to her head and nodded, her eyes big and round as she stared at me. My heart stung but I got up and moved to the door.
‘Don’t shut it all the way. It’s too dark.’
‘Okay.’ I left an inch gap then headed back down. Mum was already back in the kitchen, tipping the dustpan of broken glass into the bin.
‘She really misses you, you know,’ Mum said.
‘I know.’
‘She looks up to you so much.’
I didn’t say anything this time and Mum glanced over at me. ‘You should try spending more time with her. It’s almost like you avoid it.’
‘That’s not it at all.’ I could see my answer didn’t convince her. I thought about further explaining but then felt the force of moving air behind me, like a tornado approaching.
‘Out the way, sis!’ Frankie shouted.
I just about managed to sidestep out of my galloping brother’s path before he rushed past and around to the other side of the small kitchen island where he came to an abrupt stop, looking back over, a grin from ear to ear.
‘I’m going to get you next time,’ Tom blasted from behind me. He sounded angry enough, but his relaxed face told a different story.
‘Come on now, boys,’ Mum said, glaring at both of them in turn. ‘This is how the last accident happened. You need to calm down. Tom, it’s nearly time for your bed anyway.’
‘Awwhhh, seriously?’ A petulant eye-roll and shrug of the shoulders from him.
‘I was just getting a drink,’ Frankie said, moving to the fridge. ‘He won’t leave me alone.’
‘Can I have one?’ Tom asked.
‘It’s too late for you. Frankie, another beer, really?’
‘Please?’ Frankie mock-begged, the can already in between his prayer hands.
Mum sighed. ‘Fine. But it’s the last one.’
He smiled then went to leg it out of the room when Tom made a move on him.
‘Boys!’ Mum shouted at the top of her voice. They both came to a stop before slowly moving out, but we both knew they’d be back at it any second. Tom was Frankie’s little shadow, followed him everywhere, and Frankie loved it. Loved the attention he got, perhaps mainly because outside the four walls of our house, away from family, he was as introverted as I was.
‘How about you?’ Mum asked.
‘What?’
She nodded to the empty flute on the island worktop.
‘I shouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve got an early train back tomorrow.’
My turn now for the Mum glare. ‘I really wish you’d booked something later. You knew we were having everyone over.’
I didn’t say anything. Whatever explanation I’d given – particularly the truth – would only have upset her, even though I really did want to talk to her about… no, I wasn’t thinking about that now.
‘Just a small one,’ I conceded.
Mum filled the glass to the top. Filled herself one too.
‘Come on, it’s time to give Dad his present.’
‘Didn’t we do that already?’
Which of course we had, three hours ago, when he’d had his presents off us all plus his cake with forty-eight candles, which Lily had blown out for him, pretty much one after the other, slobbering all over the icing as she did so – much to the amusement of my immature brothers.
‘We did. But I’ve got him a special something too.’
‘For his forty-eighth? Not exactly a big one, is it?’
Mum’s eyes pinched as she looked at me, as though I was being hard work. ‘Come on,’ she said.
In the dining room the table was now pretty much cleared of the food from earlier, just the cheese and biscuits and a few other scraps remaining.
Everyone gathered around, drinks in hand, fifteen of us in total. A nice family unit, even if we weren’t all close to one another. Still, it was nice to have everyone together. With Nanna struggling as she was, there wouldn’t be many of these occasions left.
I gritted my teeth in irritation at my own grim thoughts. I looked over at Nanna, sunk in an armchair in the corner of the room. It looked like she’d never get out of there. She certainly wouldn’t without help. Not after the three whiskey and waters she’d had. At least it was only three. She’d asked for more, but I’d given her a little bit of cold tea in the glass instead, sweetened it up with a bit of sugar. If she’d noticed, she hadn’t said anything. Probably wouldn’t to me.
‘I just wanted to say a special thank you to all for coming today, so close to Christmas as well; I know everyone’s really busy, but…’ My mum paused. She looked so uncomfortable. I didn’t know why. I felt embarrassed for her. ‘Andrew, we’ve been together for so long, and you know how much I love you. Not everything’s been plain-sailing, and, without saying too much to everyone, this year has been a little more challenging than most.’
‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ Uncle Duncan shouted out.
I tightened the grip on my glass – anger. Mum shot him a look too. But I was more concerned about Mum’s words than Duncan’s heckle. I’d sensed something wasn’t right, but what was she talking about? And why was I so in the dark?
I looked over at Frankie, grinning like a buffoon still as he squeezed Tom’s shoulders to hold him in place. If either of them knew anything was wrong with our parents, they didn’t show it.
‘I felt like you needed a little something extra,’ Mum added, quite lamely, as she looked at Dad.
‘Sounds like it’s your lucky night, Andy!’ Duncan spewed. ‘Make sure you use protection.’
I winced at his words. Dad looked pissed off too, but as always, no one said anything to Duncan. We were all too nice, and no one wanted to cause a scene by calling out his imbecilic nature. Families, eh?
Mum took the envelope from the table and handed it to Dad. He had a grin on his face, but also looked a little dubious. He opened the envelope. Took out the piece of paper, unfolded it. His eyes went wide. ‘Wow! Italy? The Grand Prix? Are you serious?’
Mum clasped her hands together and nodded. Her eyes welled. Mine too.
Dad reached forward and grabbed Mum and pulled her close to him, and for a few seconds their hug appeared genuine and loving and heartfelt and completely natural. But when they parted… something in their eyes. Distance, coldness. Mum stepped away. Dad grabbed his beer and took a heavy swig and the two of them simply drifted apart as people carried on with the night.
I watched them – my parents, my rocks – for a few more moments, my heart aching. It was true I’d acutely noticed their awkwardness with each other today, and I wasn’t sure what had caused it now, but in reality I knew the distance between them had grown, slowly, incrementally, for some time, what they’d lost irretrievable.
I also knew it had all started because of me.
